“The continent had to be discovered emotionally. It had to become a homeland and feel like home. The sense of overpowering space, the isolation, the warmth of summer, the garish light, the shiny-leafed trees, the birds and insects, the smell of air filled with dust, the strange silences, and the landscapes in all their oddness had to become familiar.”

“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.”

“But our bird knew not of the free blue air,
He had lived in his cage, and his home was there :
No flight had he in the green wood flown —
He pined not for freedom he never had known!
If he had lived amid leaf and bough
It had been cruel to fetter him now;
For I have seen a poor bird die,
And all for love of his native sky.”

“At some point, somethin has had it away with a leaf [Karl's explanation of an insect which has evolved to look like a leaf to protect itself from predators]”

“Sophie's hard first question to the cards had not, precisely, gone without an answer, it had been transmuted into questions about the question. It had branched and rooted like a tree, growing questions like buds, and then at some moment all the questions had become one question: what tree is this?”

“By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me, I will be a tree that you come home to.”

“She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not become like the man, she had become vulgar.”

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

“Lights," I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.”